Yesterday, amidst the onslaught of stories stemming from the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, there may be one story you might need missed: Earlier than leaving workplace, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who will now serve the rest of his sentence in residence confinement.
That is main information on the earth of indigenous resistance. Peltier is likely one of the surviving members of the American Indian Motion of the Sixties and ’70s, and his 50-year imprisonment spurred a brand new technology of activists. It’s additionally a subject that’s on the coronary heart of co-directors David France (“The best way to Survive a Plague,” “Welcome to Chechnya,” “The Loss of life and Lifetime of Marsha P. Johnson”) and Jesse Brief Bull’s new movie “Free Leonard Peltier,” which is slated to premiere on the Sundance Movie Competition on Monday, January 27. The movie’s Sundance blurb advertises that, in trying on the contentious conviction of Peltier for 2 counts of first diploma homicide, “a brand new technology of Native activists is dedicated to successful his freedom earlier than he dies.”
IndieWire realized that yesterday, only one week earlier than the movie’s world premiere, the filmmakers headed again into the enhancing room to vary the movie’s ending and incorporate the most recent improvement within the completed movie. Though Sundance requires filmmakers to submit their remaining DCPs early to allow them to be examined, it’s not unusual filmmakers to blow deadlines to take care of final minute technical points — and there are a lot of a harrowing story of movies being flown in on the final minute — however re-opening the edit doubtless means the “Free Leonard Peltier” crew has some sleepless nights forward of them.
Along with exploring the activism surrounding the Free Leonard Peltier motion, the documentary additionally guarantees, utilizing interviews and archival footage (together with older interviews with Peltier himself), to take a look at “the occasions surrounding the 1975 Pine Ridge shoot-out, the place [Peltier] was convicted of killing two FBI brokers — a cost he has denied for 50 years.”
Peltier’s final guilt and potential wrongful conviction has lengthy been a politically hot-button situation, which solely heated up after Biden misplaced the 2024 election in November, and stress mounted for him to commute the 80-year outdated activist’s conviction earlier than leaving workplace. Biden’s FBI director Chris Wray publicly warned the previous president towards commuting Peltier’s sentence, saying it could be “shattering to the victims’ family members and undermine the rules of justice and accountability that our authorities ought to symbolize.”
“I hope these letters are pointless, and that you’re not contemplating a pardon or commutation,” wrote Wray. “However on behalf of the FBI household, and out of an abundance of warning, I wish to make certain our place is evident: Peltier is a remorseless killer, who brutally murdered two of our personal–Particular Brokers Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. Granting Peltier any reduction from his conviction or sentence is wholly unjustified and can be an affront to the rule of regulation.”
The circumstances surrounding Coler and Williams’ deaths aren’t fairly as black-and-white, in line with a lot of Peltier’s supporters, who see what occurred at Pine Ridge as being a part of the continued 500-year historical past of abuses towards Indigenous individuals. Many have known as into query the investigation itself, and there are a variety of civil rights and authorized consultants who’ve known as the conviction itself unjust. That was some extent that was made once more in a December letter, signed by 34-members of Congress, together with the Indian Affairs Chairman senator U.S. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), which known as on Biden to grant Peltier clemency.